The widespread availability of the World Wide Web and related data processing and communication technologies have created new ways for businesses to market their products and services to their customers. Among the many new businesses that have taken advantage of the capabilities of the Web are printing service providers. These companies typically allow customers to access a web site, download editing tools to the customer's computer, and design custom content to be printed subsequently on products such as documents, clothing, and promotional goods.
One network-based product design system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,247,011 entitled “Computerized Prepress”. The patent discloses a downloadable document authoring tool that runs in the client browser. The product created by the client is uploaded to the server where it is processed by a translation program into a prepress file format. Another system is disclosed in co-pending and co-owned U.S. application No. 09/557,571 entitled “Managing Print Jobs”, which is hereby incorporated by reference. The system discloses a downloadable editing tool that allows a customer to create and edit custom materials in the customer's browser.
A company desiring to provide flexible and powerful client/server design services that allow a customer to create custom WYSIWYG products in the client's browser would desirably want to provide the user with both the ability to enter, modify and arrange text in the product being created and the ability to incorporate an existing client file, for example, a design, company logo, photograph, or previously prepared text. Providing these features poses several challenges.
For example, the system should desirably be able to accept files from the customer in various file formats in common use today, such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat, and Adobe Photoshop, as well as Bitmap, GIF, JPEG, PCX, PICT, PNG and TIF, and automatically perform any necessary file conversions to create one or more preview versions, typically in GIF or JPEG format, for review by the customer and a prepress version, typically in PDF format, for later use in printing the customer's product. A prior art system for receiving files and automatically performing conversions under the control of a master program is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,429,947 entitled “Automated, Hosted Prepress Application”.
In addition, it is highly desirable during the design process to display to the client an image of the product that is as close to the appearance of the final printed product as possible. This poses the problem of dealing with the inherent incompatibility between the color rendering abilities of a computer monitor and the abilities of the product printing system. As is well known, computer displays are pixel-based systems that render colors using red, green and blue light (RGB). Most printing systems, by contrast, render colors using inks. Offset printing systems, which are frequently used for high quality, high resolution printing of documents, render colors using cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK). While there is substantial overlap between the RGB color gamut and the CMYK color gamut, the two are not identical. There are certain colors that can be rendered on an RGB computer monitor that cannot be produced on a CMYK system and vice versa. In designing a product on the user's computer, it is possible that a file uploaded for the product by the user will contain colors that cannot be accurately produced on an RGB system. When this happens, computer monitor systems will typically select a substitute RGB color in an attempt to approximate the original CMYK color. In some cases, the substitute RGB color is noticeably different from the color of the original image. Similarly, it is possible that the user will upload a file for the product that contains colors that can be rendered accurately in RGB, but cannot be duplicated with a CYMK system. Both of these situations are undesirable because the result would be a final printed product that differs from the colors of the product image that was viewed and approved by the user during the design process.
Furthermore, a computerized product design system that is available to many customers worldwide faces the problems of dealing with many simultaneous product design sessions and with customers who may be using web browsers that lack the dynamic features and capabilities of current state-of-the-art browsers. It is highly desirable that the system be able to accommodate simultaneous users, including users using older or less capable browsers, while retaining the ability to quickly generate and display an image of the product to users in a manner that represents the appearance of the final printed product as accurately as possible.
Finally, a web-based system, if it meets with success in the marketplace, may need to deal with a rapid increase in the demand for its services. If the system becomes overwhelmed to the point that users experience excessive delays or are unable to access the service at all, customer satisfaction will decline and some may seek alternate sources for their product.